


drums of the city rain

by pendules



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drums of the city rain

**Author's Note:**

> Title/inspiration from Gerard Way's "Brother."

Ryan can't sleep.

It's just - he's pretty sure it's not supposed to feel like this. Growing up, it's supposed to be - it's supposed to _feel_ more fulfilling than this, somehow. It's supposed to feel like you're becoming the person you were meant to be, not like you're losing yourself, like you're fading away. Ryan doesn't even know who he is anymore. Except he is who he's always been. That person seems like a stranger now, though, someone who shouldn't exist in this time.

We all grow up. We grow up and become internet famous. We grow up and disappear.

Maybe some of us never really did though.

Maybe some of us did way too fast, so everything's just empty space now. There's nothing new, nothing bright and exciting, to look forward to anymore. There hasn't been for years and years.

Ryan remembers feeling so, so old, at the age of seventeen.

Then there was Brendon, and he was something else - something brilliant and intoxicating and rare, like an oasis, like water in the desert. And he'd seen enough to be bitter and jaded, but he was anything but, and Ryan didn't know what to do with that, so he just didn't say anything, just curled a hand around his neck and kissed him, soft as anything. And he felt young, just for a second, although the way Brendon looked at him after, like he could see every piece of him, made _him_ seem older than he ever had before.

He saw it again, that look, when he'd leave the morning after, when he'd go see his girlfriend, when he walked away the last time.

When he left, he'd thought _maybe this is it_ , maybe this is when they grow up for real, away from teenage fantasies and memories of a town and life they both wanted to forget. But all he really did was get left behind.

He used to dream of Brendon a lot, for a long time after. Now, he doesn't dream of anything at all.

*

It's been raining for days and Ryan hates the sound. Hates the sound on metal and concrete and on the inside of his skull. He can't remember ever thinking that the sound of rain was pleasant, although there obviously must have been a time. He can't even stay still for more than a few moments because of this weird jittery feeling in his veins. He's on the very edge, he hasn't slept properly in what seems like weeks, and this is probably what going crazy feels like. 

He spends his nights in almost-empty bars. He doesn't even drink much anymore; he just doesn't really want to go home. When he gets kicked out at closing the third night in a row, he decides it's probably time.

Brendon opens the door, and he's pulling on a shirt and his hair is still wet from the shower, and Ryan doesn't know what to say. What to say after five years and a thousand kisses and not enough, never enough, words. There's _I can't sleep_ and _Maybe this was a mistake_ and _I should've known, I should've known all along, why didn't you tell me not to go._

What comes out is:

"Can we go somewhere?"

"Where?" Not _What?_ , not _What are you doing here?_

"Just - somewhere else."

"Okay, let me grab a jacket."

*

It feels like hours, getting out of the city, remembering the way to that one beach they'd gone to ages ago, quiet, secluded.

He lets out a sigh of relief when he exits the car. There's no metal out here, just trees and sand and - this was it, the last time he enjoyed the rain, the soothing sound of it hitting the ocean.

They don't talk about it, not about the last time or about anything much at all. They take their shoes off and roll the cuffs of their jeans up and skip stones across the water, standing about an arm's length apart. It's enough. It's closer than they've been in years, and it's close enough.

*

The sun's coming up and they're sitting on the wet sand, toes buried. 

"You okay?" Brendon finally asks. And it's understandable, that he'd be kind of worried. But Brendon is more perceptive than most people think, knows how to breach the subject carefully.

"Yeah, I mean, in general. Haven't been sleeping much," he says, shrugging.

"Not taking any pills?"

"I don't think it'd work, to be honest."

Brendon doesn't press the issue. 

"You left pretty early that night," he says instead, and they both know what he means. It was at a party of one of their mutual friends and maybe they'd both drank too much and Ryan had said something insensitive and untrue, like he's wont to do, and Brendon had called him an asshole, like he's wont to do, and Ryan knew he should've apologised because who knew when he'd get the chance again? But he's a coward, always has been.

"I didn't mean -"

"I know you didn't. I always know when you say shitty things just to get to people."

"I'm -"

"I was kind of worried, actually."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, didn't seem like your heart was really in it."

Ryan wants to laugh then, so he does. And then Brendon does, and that sound, it's almost enough to take the dark and the storm away.

*

They have breakfast at one of Brendon's favourite pancake houses on the outskirts of town. It kind of reminds him of this place back in Vegas where the band used to meet up on weekends. He wonders kind of absently if _that's_ the reason he likes it so much.

Ryan watches him smother his stack of blueberry pancakes in syrup and he feels dislocated in time.

"You go back home often?" he asks casually.

"Uh, yeah, once or twice a year. It's crazy - it's exactly the same. My parents still drive the same car, kids still hang out at the same spots we used to, the high school's still that off-vomit colour -"

"Sounds great," he says trying to keep his tone dry and emotionless. It's hard to fool Brendon though.

Ryan's only been back to the old neighbourhood once since his dad died. There's nothing there for him anymore. They both know that.

"Wanna split a milkshake?" Brendon asks a second later, like he hasn't noticed anything.

"Seriously?" he says, looking at the sugar-drowned tower still on his plate.

Brendon gives him his toothiest, most innocent grin.

*

"What do you wanna do?" he says as they walk down the sidewalk. It's like he can tell Ryan's in no hurry to get home.

"I don't know, whatever." It feels good, not having a destination in mind, just letting the day take them where it will.

"Okay, there's this great record shop a couple blocks from here -"

*

The girl behind the counter apparently recognises them, because she makes this weird, high-pitched sound and then she's grabbing her phone and typing frantically. And that hasn't happened in a while. To him, anyway. But it's both of them, together, and maybe they're kind of conspicuous. Brendon is, always is, even in a white t-shirt and (admittedly really tight) washed-out jeans, a dark leather jacket and Ray Bans. Ryan is pretty ordinary-looking in comparison but it's easy to make the connection. 

"Hey, you want a picture or something?" Brendon asks, with his politest smile.

She looks up, eyes wide like she's been caught doing something absolutely heinous, and just nods.

Ryan snorts behind the Beach Boys record he's inspecting.

"Any chance you don't put this on Twitter?" Brendon says, as he's smiling for their selfie.

She looks kind of scared then, like she thinks she's gonna get sued or something. It's pretty cute.

Ryan decides to save the poor girl from the onslaught of Brendon's puppy-dog eyes.

"Hey, how about you take one with both of us?"

She looks like she's about to faint.

Her hands are pretty shaky but eventually they get a decent shot, her standing between them, their bodies curving into each other, and for a second, Brendon's hand grips his shoulder, like he wants to keep him, just there.

*

They drive down the coast playing Sublime, sunglasses on, windows down. It's just a thin drizzle now, and the nervous buzzing under his skin is starting to dissipate. Brendon looks across at him, but it's not worried anymore, it's kind of content and hopeful.

They eat burgers sitting on the hood of his car, talking about friends and acquaintances, but not anyone they're dating, and movies and books and music, but not _theirs_ , not really.

Maybe they should've done this years ago. Break all the tension, cut down all the barriers between them. Let each other know that it's okay. _They're_ okay, even if everything else is shit.

Maybe they won't be though, because they still need to talk about it.

*

It's a bad sign, he guesses, when it starts pouring again when they drive up to Brendon's house.

"You wanna come inside?"

They make a run for it, bags with records their only shelter.

Brendon grabs them towels and tells him he can shower, change, whatever. Doesn't say, _Stay_ , but maybe it's there in his eyes.

Ryan's wearing his clothes and his hair's a mess but Brendon just smiles at him like this is totally normal, Ryan standing in his living room like he belongs there, like it used to be.

"You can have the guest room if you want. Or just stay out here - there's DVDs or whatever -"

Ryan just sits down across from him and it's pretty dark in the room, just a dim light coming in from the hallway.

He takes a breath, says what he maybe should have hours ago, years ago. But he was too scared, scared that it'd drive him away for good, that saying it to him would make it real, would mean admitting how much he's fucked everything up. For himself, and for them.

"I - I keep thinking about how easy it was. We'd be out in the tour bus, in the middle of nowhere, some deserted highway at 3am, and we'd stay up all night, telling each other stories. And then we'd fall asleep as the sun came up, and I don't think I've ever slept better than that. Next to you. In a tiny bunk, going 65." 

It's the most he's said since he picked Brendon up. Brendon just stares at him, eyes going dark.

"I just - didn't think it'd turn out like this," Ryan says, before he loses his nerve again. "I don't know, kind of makes me wish I'd appreciated it more."

"But you used to hate it," Brendon cuts in. "All those girls lining up at shows, talking about hot we were…"

"How hot _you_ were, you mean."

"Ah, well, we can't be Harry Styles forever."

Ryan grimaces. "God, _seriously_?"

"What? I'd do him."

"You'd do anyone with a pretty face and a nice mouth," he says, without thinking.

"Well, yeah."

The unsaid _That's kind of why we're here_ hangs between them.

"It wasn't just that, you know," Brendon says quickly. And they've come to it at last.

"What?"

"Us. We were young and stupid but that wasn't."

"I don't know what to say to that," Ryan admits, feeling even more exposed now.

"Really?" he says, but it's not exasperated, not yet. Ryan always has something to say, especially if it's something that is meant to _hurt_ in all the right places.

So, he does what he does best.

"I just - you made me feel good. And I made you feel like you mattered or something -"

Brendon's just nodding along, with this weird smile on his face, but he's not looking at him anymore.

"But then we didn't need that anymore," he finishes. Because they didn't. They were supposed to grow up and away from each other, date different people, _be_ different people.

"Really, Ryan? So what are you doing here then?"

He wants to yell at him, _Because I can't_ sleep.

"I - don't know," he says for the second time, and it's the truth, but he's never been able to freely say it before.

Brendon takes a deep breath.

"I only make you feel good for a while, Ryan," he says quietly. "Then I just start reminding you of things you don't want to remember."

"I'm sorry," he says, and he's never really been able to say that either.

"We're not the same people anymore," Brendon tells him, like his own apology.

"Maybe _you_ aren't," and it's a bit more resentful than he wanted it to sound. 

"It's funny," he replies. "I used to think that I stopped needing you a long time ago."

"What do you think now?"

"I think that I don't know what the fuck I was thinking."

It's a collision, so unlike the first time, but it's another first, somehow; maybe they never quite grew up the way they wanted to, but they're here anyway, where they're supposed to be. Everything else - they'll get there eventually, even if they take the long way around.

*

He falls asleep with his head resting on Brendon's chest. His heart is pounding steadily under his cheek, and it drowns out the pouring rain.


End file.
